« catching up | Main | Learning in Lavonia »

Community Performance Inc.

May 05, 2008

Our first music rehearsal with the full cast was yesterday. Our music Director, Deb Stark, of Emanuel College, asked the question, “Who has never sung with a choir or a chorus before” and only 2 people raised their hands. So we’ve got some really great singers.

Our composer, Heather McCluskey, has written five original songs for this show, and these are probably the most sophisticated, demanding pieces of music we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, in any of our projects. They sound as if they’ve come right out of a chapter of the Great American Songbook, ripe with duets, four-part harmonies, character-inspired solos, sweeping numbers filled with the theme of the play and the most skin-tingling epiphanal song--- every member of the cast feels chills as they sing it, a number called “March in the Rain”.

Even at our first music rehearsal, (which as we know, first music rehearsals can sound like a group of cats being given a tune-up by the vet all at the same time) oh, the sounds coming out of this group were beautiful and spilling out of the theater.

All week, community members have been coming and going through our theater, to help with construction or to just see what’s going on, or if there’s another way they can volunteer. Yesterday, as they came in, they made a bee-line to me, to excitedly say, “I heard them singing before I came through the door, they are wonderful.”

They are gifted in the way the Mennonite Community in Newport News was gifted, in that singing has been a rich part of their cultural heritage. We’ve got a group of people who already know how to sing well. Now, they’re coming together as a larger group, to sing well all together. There’s a comfort zone in their singing, where in places other than the Mennonite Community in Newport News, there’s been hesitance, a more timid approach to the music by the cast. Here, they’re even willing to jump in and try out their solos, as Peggy Moon did yesterday, in this big honky-tonking blues number, singing out and letting people know, “I ain’t no bump in the road”.

After the music rehearsal, Judy and Genny, along with our fab stage management team (we have four people working as a stage management team, and it’s working out so well, I’ll write about how that’s working out tomorrow) but they and the stage management team brought out the new T-shirts for the play, with dates on them, and the play title. The name of the play is “The Last Hard Times”. They’re really lovely shirts. Judy and Genny asked me earlier when we should give them out to the cast- before the show or when it opens, and I’d suggested to give them out before it opens so we’ll have a hundred walking billboards going around town for the next 5 weeks or so. Some folks put them on immediately. Others came in wearing them to the next day.

Speaking of billboards and ads, today on the way to rehearsal, I passed these new street banners, the kind you see designating special areas or neighborhoods, there are dozens of them, with the Land of Spirit logo on them, with the words “storytelling and song” and “Land of Spirit Folk Life Play”. And posters are in all the windows, stating, “The Last Hard Times is Coming”.

So that’s the really great part. It’s the first week, and our challenge so far has been in the form of rehearsal attendance. This of course, is a new project. People don’t know yet that there is a finite time in which to work, to get the most magical experience in performance. As this time closes in, the moments we have left to polish and shine the production begin to slip away. We’ve got to educate the cast members about this. First rehearsals are often the ones actors blow off, thinking “Ah, I know the important stuff is going to happen a little later, I don’t need to do table work”. Even in established projects, this happens.

First rehearsals are probably the most important. It’s when we sit down together, figure out what our characters are, their purpose in the play, how they relate to the other scenes and characters in the play, etc., etc.

We’ve had some great rehearsals, and we’ve also had some that were poorly attended, when doubles weren’t present, so now some people are going to be in the know more than others, and it can become a game of catch up for those who didn’t attend. Richard and I want to do everything we can to help people NOT have the experience of playing catch up. We’re being really pro-active about it, because we’ve seen in the past where this happened, and we waited a couple of weeks to shore things up. This time, we’re trying to stop it before it gets started. And, of course, it all comes down to education. I think if we, at our next “all cast” rehearsal, take some time out and explain it to them, they’ll get it. I think it’s just a matter of them not knowing how crucial these first rehearsals are. A little information makes a world of difference. I fully expect after that meeting to have 90-100% attendance, and not the 80% we had this week. Because one thing I can say about the folks here, which I’ve been saying all along, is that they get stuff done.

   

« catching up | Main | Learning in Lavonia »